


Anchored

by moneill0775



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Also fluff, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angel & Demon Interactions, Angel Bilbo, Angel Hunters, Angel Wings, Angel/Demon Relationship, Bilbo doesn't want to go..., Childhood Trauma, Couch Cuddles, Cuddling & Snuggling, Demon Dwarves, Demon Hunters, Demon Thorin, Demons, Dwarf Courting, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Foster Care, Half-Demon Ori, It's temporary I promise, Legal Drama, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mute Bilbo Baggins, Naked Cuddling, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Separations, Sleepy Cuddles, So many tags..., So much cuddling..., Tags May Change, Xenophobia, Young Bilbo Baggins, Young Love, Young Thorin Oakenshield, forced seperation, lots of fluff...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-14 18:00:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5752942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moneill0775/pseuds/moneill0775
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo Baggins is an Aingeal, one of heaven's finest reborn on earth. His parents, Belladonna Baggins nee Took and Bungo Baggins, are killed in front of him at a young age. While placed in the Foster Care system temporarily so that his relatives could figure out just what to do with Bag End and Bilbo's inheritance, he's fostered out to the Durin family. The Durins are Daemons, supposedly the mortal enemies of Aingeals. At first, the eldest child, Thorin Durin, is hostile towards him, but as the days pass, they can't help but be fascinated by each other. As they grow older together, they come to realize that there might be something more to their platonic relationship than either of them thought. Just as they are coming together, Bilbo's real family comes back to haunt him, and start to drag him towards something that Bilbo never wanted to happen: being separated from the family that he has come to love as his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The coffee tasted bitter, even more so than usual, but what could one expect when the coffee pot looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years, since the small office had opened almost ten years ago. Nob grimaced down at his coffee cup, which read “Life’s A Beach,” as he stirred it with his spoon absently. He sometimes forgot why he worked there, being so bored so frequently. Aingeals were good parents (for the most part), and you didn’t often hear from the humans about child or domestic abuse; it was often kept rather hush-hush. Too much quiet for Nob’s liking: Aingeals, or Hobbits, as they were called in the Shire, were known for their gossip, so if one was mistreating a child or a spouse, Social Services was quick to pick up on it.  


There were five employees that worked there, somewhat infrequently, their boss might add. It was a small branch of Social Services that looked out for the children in Shire County and the nearby town of Bree. The office they were in was just on the edge of Bree, with a bookstore on the right and a small café on the left, where most of the employees took coffee before work and grabbed a quick lunch. In the office, there were four cubicles and one larger space in the back for the regional supervisor, Lily Brockhouse. There was a small area for the children to play in that had a few toys and some paper and crayons, much like a meeting room in the Children’s Home that was down the road a ways.  
Nob had been working there for almost three years, having come from a good angelic, Hobbit-y type household. His parents and younger brother, Bob, all still resided in that same neighborhood on the outskirts of Bree, and Nob, too, was living with his pregnant wife and twin daughters a few houses down from the house that he grew up in. It was common among Aingeal communities for families to stay well within the area that they had grown up in.  


He sat down at his sparsely decorated desk, humming evenly as he glanced over the thin stack of case files that he had next to the computer. Everyone at the office had at least one case file, even if the only items in the file was a complaint from the neighbor that some kid’s parents were getting too rough, or a kid looked underfed (at least by Hobbit standards). Sometimes, not even a Hobbit like Nob could understand the seven meals that they all ate. Granted, he would never say a bad thing about elevensies or afternoon tea, not when his wife made such good scones to go with the calming chamomile tea and the biscuits that he sometimes stole away to eat along with the office coffee.  
Nob had, at the moment, three case files. One of them was for one of the Brandybucks, Aphodel, and her husband, Rufus Burrows. Their only child was Marroc Burrows, a small lad of about nine years old. It was something simple really: a few bruises that had caught the eyes of the teacher and had raised some slight concerns. Nob had visited the home, had met the parents, had talked to the child, and had found nothing amiss. However, to keep the teachers sane and comfortable, he kept the file open, just in case something else like this should come up. Nob kept up regular reports with the teachers at the schools in the nearby area, wanting to make sure that he didn’t miss anything that might be taken as just another bruise, but was actually abuse.  


Nob’s second case file contained vital information on a local human family in Bree, the Butterburs. Barliman Butterbur was the owner of the Inn of the Prancing Pony, a very popular watering hole for both locals and out-of-towners, and his wife helped him in the kitchens, behind the bar, and as a waitress. They had three kids together, and while Nob knew very well that the kids were safe and were being raised by loving parents, it didn’t stop some people, both locals and people just passing through, from raising concerns with Social Services about kids being raised in that kind of environment. It had become a joke around the office really, whenever someone popped in with a concern about the Butterburs. Nonetheless, due to the decent amount of complaints they had received over the years, they had reluctantly started a file.  


His final case file was on that of Otho Sackville-Baggins and his wife, Lobelia. They were in their late twenties or so, and they had one son, Lotho, who was six. There weren’t many people in Shire County who didn’t know who Otho and Lobelia were: they were considered to be the biggest gossips in the nearest fifty or so miles, and perhaps the biggest nuisance in the Aingeal community anywhere, if Nob had anything to say about it. Their son wasn’t being abused, per se, but it seemed that Lotho didn’t have any qualms about taking after his parents when it came to verbally, and sometimes physically, abusing other children. It made many people wonder if Otho and Lobelia were abusing him, which was causing Lotho to be cruel others. Nob knew that it wasn’t true, that Lotho was just a right little bastard who ought to be put in his place, granted he never said as much in front of the parents. They had been downright insulted when he’d shown up at their door, telling them about the complaints, had even threatened to file charges. Charges were never filed as it was determined that Nob was just doing his job, and so the file remained, on top of all the other files.  


It was the family that he was most concerned with, if he were being brutally honest with himself and his boss. It should be a crime to allow a child to grow up in a hateful household, to allow a kid to grow up being hateful himself.  


By nine that morning, Nob had been joined by his boss Lily and a coworker, Eglantine Banks. It had been a slow morning, but every morning was slow in Shire County. Still, it helped that they pretended to work, as if to appear like they had a lot of cases to attend to. It was not yet nine oh three when a man walked in. He was taller than Nob, for certain, and he was wearing a grey suit that greatly matched his beard and equally grey fedora.  


“Good morning. I need to see a case worker,” he spoke softly, but within his tone was a ribbon of steel.  


Lily stared for a moment, pursing her lips a bit before she nods and says, “Alright. Nob can take you, Mr…?”  


“Grey. Gandalf Grey,” the older gentleman supplies helpfully.  


Lily smiled politely and invited him back. Nob sat up a little bit straighter as Gandalf sat down across from him, taking off his fedora and placing it in his lap. He reminded the social worker of a crazy old man who had dressed up specifically just to go out, but would then immediately take off his clothes and pull on a robe once he stepped through the door back home.  


“So, what can I do for you today, Mr. Grey?” Nob asked him politely, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “Are you here to file a complaint?”  


Gandalf frowned a bit before replying, “Yes, and no.”  


He blinks for a moment, trying to wrap his head around the answer. He opens his mouth to respond before Gandalf shakes his head and says, “Well, I’m here for answers at least. Truthful ones, mind you.”  


Nob nods quickly. “I will help you as best as I can, Mr. Grey.”  


“Please, call me Gandalf,” he said amiably. “And I’m sure that you will, Master Nob.”  


Gandalf clears his throat a little bit, shifting in his seat as he asks quietly, “When did Lobelia and Otho Sackville-Baggins move into Bag End?”  


Nob blinks a few times and scratches his head, trying to think back. “I don’t know, maybe about ten years ago or so, right after Bungo and Belladonna died.”  


His breath catches in his throat as he leans forward suddenly. “Bungo and Belladonna Baggins? They’re dead?”  


Nob merely nodded. Gandalf made a soft sound in his throat and looked away for a moment. He looked a bit lost, his eyes kind of distant, like nobody was home for a few moments. Then, he looked back.  


“How did they die?” he inquired hoarsely.  


“The Cultists got to them,” Nob muttered, his chest uncomfortably tight. Nobody from here to Tuckborough had slept in those next few weeks after their deaths. “Took their wings, too.”  


Gandalf grimaced, looking pensive again before he straightened and asked, “Are the Sackville-Bagginses then taking care of the child?”  


“The child?” Nob echoed. “You mean Bilbo?”  


Gandalf nodded once. Nob shook his head quickly, saying, “Ah, no. No they are not.”  


He frowned. “Then, where is Bilbo Baggins?”  


Nob opened his mouth to answer, but promptly closed it; where was Bilbo Baggins? He held up a finger, quickly heading back to Lily’s office as Gandalf nodded slightly, giving him the moment that he needed to gather his thoughts. He knocked on her door, heading inside at her soft “enter.” She looked up at him from where she was looking over her notes on a case.  


“Do we have a file on Bilbo Baggins? It would be old, about ten years old, maybe?”  


Lily pursed her lips, resting her chin on her fist as she thought. Then, she shook her finger, heading over to a file cabinet that was almost taller than her five foot four stature. She opened up the middle drawer, looking over it for a brief moment before shaking her head and shutting the cabinet. Lily opened up the drawer beneath it, flicking through the files with her fingers. She made a soft sound of triumph as she pulled out a file and handed it to him. “Baggins, Bilbo” was the label on the tab.  


Nob nodded his thanks and hurried back to Gandalf. The man was sitting there calmly, looking around with polite interest as he awaited the social worker. He looked relatively much more attentive as Nob sat down in front of him, smoothing his tie as he placed the file in front of him. He opened it and flicked through it absently.  


Finally, Gandalf sighs and asked as politely as possible, “So, where is Bilbo Baggins?”  


Nob frowned as he glanced up at him before he looked back down at the paperwork. He bit his lip as he said carefully, “It looks like he was fostered out to a family just two weeks after he got to the Children’s Home.”

Gandalf frowned as well, a bit harsher though as he asked again, “Where is he?”

Nob hesitates. “Well…I’m not sure that I can give you that information, Mr. Grey.”

“I am his godfather,” he boomed, standing up to his full height so that he towered over the Aingeal. Nob cringed and scooted back in his chair a bit as Lily came rushing out of her office.

“What is going on here?” she demanded to know. Her hands were firmly planted on her hips as her eyes flicked between Gandalf and Nob. “Mr. Grey, if you cannot control yourself, then you will have to leave.”

Gandalf gave her a long, scrutinizing look before he let out a deep breath. The tension that had colored the air seemed to leave the room as he sat back down. He stroked his long beard for a moment before composing himself totally. A half-smile was in place as he looked up at Lily.  


“I apologize, Ms. Brockhouse, for my outburst,” he murmured, his cheeks colored a light pink. “I am just greatly concerned for Bilbo.”  


Lily nodded in understanding as she glanced down at the file, staring intently at the paperwork. “Well, Mr. Grey, it seems that Bilbo Baggins was fostered out to a family in Erebor.”  


Gandalf paused for thought, tapping his chin as he murmured, “Fifteen hours away…Who was fostering him, if I might inquire?”  


“Looks like he was fostered out…to a woman named Ris Durinson and her family,” she continued, placing a finger on the signature at the bottom of the paper. “She’s another social worker, but she works out of a different county.”  


Gandalf looked pensive as Nob piped up, “Mr. Grey, Gandalf, if I might inquire why you are looking for him after so long?”  


“I had no knowledge of the death of Belladonna and Bungo Baggins,” Gandalf uttered, patting his pockets as he searched for his pipe. “The last time I had seen them, Bilbo had been a mere toddler of three. I came back to see them, but I went to their house to find that…that horrid woman and her husband claiming that it was now their home.”  


Lily nodded as Nob grimaced; ah, the Sackville-Bagginses. They were always making themselves uncomfortable and unwanted even in their own “home.” Gandalf was hardly the first person to come in and complain about them, and he would most certainly not be the last.  


“They claimed to have no knowledge of Bilbo or where he might be, only that he was not within the home.” He held his pipe now, tapping it against the table as his eyes went distant again. “It’s not their home, though. It’s Bilbo’s home. His parents gifted him Bag End in their will, and I come to find out that he is nowhere to be found.”  


His eyes were fiery now, giving Nob the slightest feeling of a crackle of power in the air. “So, I will ask again: where is Bilbo Baggins?”


	2. Chapter One

Ten years ago…

Sometimes a person never comes back. Bilbo’s parents had told him that once, after the funeral of one of his father’s brothers. He hadn’t really understood then, being only three or so, but he was five now. At five, he realized that his parents were never coming back.

Bilbo Baggins had arrived at the Children’s Home of Bree eleven days ago, wearing blood-spattered clothes and carrying a raggedy, old stuffed hummingbird. He’d been picked up after hikers found him curled up in the curve of a very dead Belladonna Baggins’s arm. His father, Bungo Baggins, was face down just a few feet away from them, his outstretched hand being gripped tightly by his shaking son. 

“Has he spoken yet?” A man had asked that time.

They thought that Bilbo wasn’t paying attention, that because he was so busy drawing that he wouldn’t notice that they were talking about him. But he did.

Another person sighed. “No, but this is a normal reaction for the trauma that he went through.” It was a woman this time. 

“Did he at least give something to the police?” a third voice asked, another woman, sounding a bit exasperated. Bilbo bit his lip, trying not to let his bottom lip shake; he didn’t like it when adults were mad at him.

He heard someone shift on their feet. “He drew them a picture of the men who killed his parents,” the first woman answered tersely. Bilbo hoped that they were mad at the person who was mad at him.

Bilbo sniffed, rubbing his nose as he picked up the red crayon. He was used to drawing flowers and meadows and pretty things that made him happy. Now though, he found that he couldn’t. He kept picking up the red and once he started drawing with it, he couldn’t stop. Sometimes, the once-white paper would be colored entirely in red crayon, and Bilbo would simply stare, being reminded of the blood that had broken up the smooth skin of his mother’s throat.

His scratched his head with his free hand. About twenty minutes after he had arrived that first day, he had had the first bath of many. The blood matting his honey curls had disappeared, and he now smelt like the Children’s Home instead of his mother’s perfume. He didn’t really like the smell; it was the scent of being forgotten, and Bilbo didn’t want to be forgotten. At least, he didn’t want to be forgotten in this place. Bilbo’s free hand reached down and gripped his hummingbird, Bombadil, tightly, searching for comfort from the one of two things that were truly his in the Home.

He had been brought three different sets of clothes and one set of pajamas by the caretakers there at the Children’s Home. They were his now, they had told him, but they weren’t what Bilbo would normally wear at all: he was used to waistcoats and nice pants, not jeans. These new clothes stripped him of who he was, trying to place him a neutral place. He wasn’t quite his old self, that one he had been before he came to the Home, but he hadn’t found his new self yet either, or a new family, so to speak. 

Bilbo finally put down the red crayon that he had been coloring with and looked at the picture he had drawn. Well, picture was kind of a stretch; it looked more like a bunch of red scribbles all over the page. In one corner of the page, Bilbo had drawn a tiny self portrait of himself crying as he watched the red scribble envelop his parents. He had drawn them in the picture originally, and you could still see the black crayon outline in some places, but they weren’t visible now thanks to the red mass that had commandeered the majority of the page. 

He frowned, his lips puckering a bit as he drew Bombadil closer, using him as almost a shield against the red that had so marred his life. Because of the red, he would never be able to go back to his parents. Because of the red, he would never feel his mother’s arms around him, or smell the Old Toby that his father smoked in the pipe that had been passed down in the Baggins family for generations. 

“That poor child,” the second woman, a caretaker, Bilbo remembered, sighed. Bilbo glanced up just as the first woman handed her back the file. Bilbo thought that she looked kind of pretty

Bilbo clenched his fists in the stuffed bird, looking back down at his drawing. The man left, closing the door behind him, but the caretaker stayed, sitting in a chair in the far back of the room, watching closely. Bilbo was sitting near the center of the large room that was filled with child-sized tables and toys for other children, children who were not there. The table that Bilbo was sitting at was a bit older and worn, covered in blank papers and papers that he had already drawn on. It was a child’s table, with short legs and short chairs that made adults look funny whenever they tried to sit down in them. Bilbo’s mother hadn’t minded, though; she had always sat next to him at the table, always smiling.

The new woman didn’t seem to mind either as she sat down next to Bilbo. She was probably used to sitting at a table like this from the way she looked so casual sitting in a child’s chair.

“Hello, Bilbo,” she said, leaning down carefully to try and meet his eyes. “I’m Ris.”

He didn’t say anything, picking up a yellow crayon. He wanted to draw a sun or maybe some sunflowers, something happy to remind him of spring. Bilbo wanted warmth. Maybe some orange, too…and red? He shook his head; no, definitely not red.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” she tried again.

Bilbo bit his lip and shrugged a little bit, his honey blonde curls bouncing slightly. He kind of cared, but not exactly. Sometimes it was nice to just have someone with you, that’s what his Mom had told him once. 

The woman, Ris, smiled slightly and nodded her head in thanks before reaching for a blank piece of paper. She picked up a blue crayon first and started drawing herself. Bilbo stopped using his own crayon and watched her. Blue is a pretty color, he thought absently. She picked up a few others colors as well, drawing with a quiet determination, like she was trying to get a point across in her picture. She smiled in satisfaction as she finished. Bilbo tilted his head, wanting to see the picture that she’d drawn.  
Ris glanced over at Bilbo before she slid her picture in between the two of them. He looked at it closely. She’d drawn people, five of them. 

“This is my family,” she explained gently. She tapped the paper, pointing to the first person. “This is my husband, Thrain, and that’s me holding his hand. And, there’s our three children: Thorin, Frerin, and the baby, Dis.”

Bilbo blinked a few times. Ris’s family looked happy; even the small one, Dis, had a smile on her face. Bilbo’s lips twitched a little bit. He was happy for Ris, he was, but he wished that it was his family wearing the smiles now. Ris watched as tears filled Bilbo’s green eyes and ached to brush them away, but she didn’t. Bilbo rubbed at this eyes, one hand still clutching the small hummingbird that he’d brought in with him. 

“Would you like to meet them, Bilbo?” Ris asked tenderly, slowly placing a hand on his back, not wanting to frighten him. He stiffened up at the touch at first, but came to relax after a moment or two. 

Bilbo shrugged again; he wasn’t really sure of anything anymore. Ris seemed okay, she even seemed rather nice. Bilbo was sure that his mom would have liked her.  
Ris sighed softly as she stood up. She smiled a little at Bilbo and murmured, “You can have that picture, Bilbo.”

She moved away and went over to the caretaker. Bilbo watched for a moment before he picked up the picture and looked at it more closely. Thrain and Ris looked really nice, and they were close and holding hands, just like his Mom and Dad had done. Bilbo frowned a little bit, remembering how his parents had sometimes lamented over not having any more children besides Bilbo; most other families in the Shire had at least three or four children. Bungo and Belladonna Baggins had only had Bilbo. 

Bilbo took the opportunity of her back being turned to study her. She was taller than his mother, maybe around five foot seven, and she had long black hair that was pulled up into a bun. His brow furrowed as he noticed a few hairs out of place, curving up from her scalp. Ris looked a little bit strange that way, but Bilbo had been taught to not say rude things to others or about others.

“Is there anything you can do?” the caretaker asked quietly, warily watching as Bilbo started drawing something else. 

Ris let out a deep breath, running a hand through her hair as she glances over at the boy before looking back at the caretaker. “There’s something that I can try, at the very least.”

She nodded desperately. “We are willing to try almost anything. We don’t want Bilbo to have to stay here when he has the possibility to have a home and a normal life.”

“In Erebor, we have a hospital specifically for children, and once a week, a children’s therapist comes from Rivendell,” Ris explained. 

“So, you want him to go Rivendell?”

“No. I want to take Bilbo to Erebor with me so that I can monitor his progress. Not only that, but I think that it would do him so good to be with a family and other children while he’s going through therapy.”

The caretaker squeaked out, “There will be an uproar! You’re a Daemon! People will start riots if they find out that you’re caring for an Aingeal child. They’ll think you’re corrupting him…”

“I don’t care what others think,” Ris retorted. “I’m doing what’s best for Bilbo! Not for…” She trailed off, looking down.

A tiny hand had gripped the bottom of her skirt. Bilbo was standing there, tugging on it lightly. Ris crouched down next to him. He searched her face with intelligent eyes before he held out a new paper. She took it with a soft smile as he toddled back over to the table. She stood up and gestured the other woman over as they looked down at the picture.  
Bilbo had put down the red crayon long enough to draw a picture of his family in return for the picture that Ris had given him. His father was holding a pipe in one of his hands, and Bilbo’s had in the other, while his mother was also holding one of Bilbo’s hands, and held a bright yellow sunflower in the other. The child had given them the best impression of wings that he could, his mother’s wings being a bright orange, his father’s being brown. 

Bilbo’s trying, Ris thought. He had tried to draw a normal picture of his family, not the red mess that he had drawn before.

“I think that’s the first remotely normal picture he’s drawn since he’s gotten here,” the caretaker murmured, looking over at Bilbo sharply. He wasn’t drawing now, only sitting, looking down at the table top.

Ris set her mouth and said firmly, “I’ll sign the paperwork to have him fostered out to me until his therapy is finished.”

“But Ris…” the caretaker began hesitantly, still worried about the difference in races.

“He needs a family,” Ris hissed out, glaring at the woman, her eyes bleeding into red. “It doesn’t matter about the difference between us! He needs someone to love him, and to tuck him in at night, and, and….” 

“Okay, Ris, okay,” she whispered quickly, trying to placate her before Bilbo heard her swearing. “I just wanted to be sure that you’re prepared for the hate that’s about to come your way if people find out.”

Ris snorted and muttered, “Who cares what they think?”


End file.
